The adoptee community sometimes uses the phrases, 'in the fog' or 'out of the fog.' They are a metaphor for an adopted person's level of conscious consideration of what it means to be an adoptee. Here is more about being in the fog, and what it means to come out of the fog.

Many adopted people grow up in loving families, comfortable in their identity. The adoptive family they know is their only family and they do not think very deeply or very often about their adoption.

What an adoptee is considered to be 'in the fog' it is a metaphor for the fact possibility that they may not have fully contemplated what being adopted means — that they were born into another family of people they don't know.

However, there is often a period in an adopted person's life when they begin to reckon with the notion that while their adoptive family is all they've ever known, their biological family of origin is out there somewhere.

Here are some things I've learned about the fog from interviewing adopted people on the Who Am I Really? podcast